Page:The Lady of the Lake - Scott (1810).djvu/249

XXVIII.
"Hear, gentle friends! ere yet, for me,
Ye break the bands of fealty.
My life, my honour, and my cause,
I tender free to Scotland's laws.
Are these so weak as must require
The aid of your misguided ire?
Or, if I suffer causeless wrong,
Is then my selfish rage so strong,
My sense of public weal so low,
That for mean vengeance on a foe,
Those chords of love I should unbind,
Which knit my country and my kind?
Oh no! Believe, in yonder tower
It will not sooth my captive hour,
To know those spears our foes should dread,
For me in kindred gore are red;
To know, in fruitless brawl begun,
For me, that mother wails her son;